Summary: Where has God placed you? Has he equipped you for service? Sometimes the hardest place to work is in God's chosen place.

I’ve often felt a little disturbed that I’ve never felt a call to go to a foreign mission field. When I hear of those who have gone to preach the gospel in other places around the world, and they tell of the tremendous response to their preaching, I’ve often thought, “I surely don’t see that here. Maybe I need to go on a missions trip.” I have talked to my cousin over at Community Bible Fellowship and heard him tell of the great Bible Schools and churches that he has built and how the people walk for miles to hear the gospel, and I wonder; “God, shouldn’t I have a burden for those people too.”

When I talk to our missionaries down in Peru and hear of the wonderful work that they are doing and how that God is moving in the churches, I wonder why I’ve never felt the desire to go there and be a part of it in person.

Some time ago I was talking to one of District Ministers who had taken a missions trip down to the Philippines and had held a two week revival where people were miraculously healed, demons were cast out and one was even raised from the dead; and I think to myself, “Lord, we live in what I believe to be the greatest nation on earth. We are blessed beyond measure, and yet I never see the kinds of miracles like this preacher described to me. Is it me. Am I missing something? Why don’t I have a desire to go and preach in a far away land like that?”

It’s not that I don’t care for missions. We support missions and I love to hear the good reports of what God is doing over there; but what about right here at home? I sometimes feel like our nation is a greater mission field than anywhere on the planet. America has been bathed in the gospel message from the moment it became a nation and yet I see fewer people truly sold out to God than ever before. We are a nation that is backslidden; steeped in sin; and completely unrepentant of the sin which we have committed against God.

You can go anywhere on earth and preach a salvation message and people will fill the altars looking for hope in Christ; anywhere but America. If we preach a gospel message here, either one of two things will happen; Either most of those who hear it in the church will be half asleep and bored; or you will be ostracized for being close-minded and intolerant.

On top of that, it seems that God has called us to build a church at home; and everyone who knows anything about the Bible knows what Jesus said in Mark 6:4, "… A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." Now God is blessing Victory Temple and we are growing slowly, and we are seeing a few people get saved and committed; and those few are what makes all the effort really worthwhile.

I’ve also read the accounts of a few missionaries who preached for years on the mission field and never saw the first convert to Christ. I just don’t know how they could do it. I have to admire their obedience to the call of God.